Sweet Somethings #4
Dirty dark chocolate latte, Bad Sisters, pantry pasta, choir
Hello and happy (almost) new year! I’m writing from Chicago, where I’ve been visiting extended family with my immediate family. Tonight, we’ll head back to the East Coast. Traveling together as an immediate family has become a rare occasion, and it’s been a gift…and a laugh. Nothing makes me feel more like a little kid than following my parents around their hometowns over the holidays (my dad grew up in the Chicago area) and getting heckled by my brothers. It’s been precious (truly!), and I’m also ready to return to my responsibilities in Brooklyn — to myself, to Teo, to my creative practices and work and so on.
Today, I’m sharing some sweet somethings to wrap up the month and the year: a neighborhood coffee shop, a favorite television show, a pantry pasta, and a new creative endeavor.
1. IXV / Dirty Dark Chocolate Latte
My neighborhood in Brooklyn, Boerum Hill, is home to a quirky little coffee shop called IXV, founded by a former J.Crew/crewcuts designer named Jenny Cooper. Built out of her garage on Pacific Street, IXV is a tiny space that operates as sustainably as possible — a product of Cooper’s frustration with the rampant use of disposable coffee cups in our city and world. In addition to your morning coffee, you can purchase reusable ceramic mugs, vintage clothing embroidered and reimagined by Cooper, and other various eco-friendly items, all reflective of Cooper’s whimsical aesthetic.
But the reason I initially set out to write this sweet something was a literal sweet something: a dirty dark chocolate latte. Even my worst moods are defenseless against a good mocha, and IXV’s take on a mocha, their dirty dark chocolate latte, is a powerful substance — velvety and bittersweet. I don’t know how they make it, but it tastes as though they melted pure dark chocolate straight into the cup, and I love it very much.
2. Bad Sisters
Bad Sisters Season 1 was my favorite show of 2022, and Bad Sisters Season 2, which just wrapped on Christmas Eve, was my favorite show of 2024. I love those brilliant, wacky, beautiful Irish sisters, and I’m with them through every twist and turn (of which there are many).
3. Mackerel Puttanesca
For an impromptu lunch the other day in Vermont, I grabbed a tin of roasted garlic mackerel (!) and made a puttanesca-inspired pasta. Puttanesca is my preferred pantry pasta, because when it seems like there’s nothing in the kitchen, there are (upon second glance) usually fixings for some sort of puttanesca — at least in my pantry of salty delights.
For this rendition, I cooked thinly sliced onions and halved cherry tomatoes in the roasted garlic oil from the mackerel tin. Meanwhile, I boiled the pasta in generously salted water. When the onion and tomato melted into a soft, sweet sauce, I stirred in some roughly chopped kalamata olives, then added a generous splash of starchy pasta water to the tomato mixture. I transferred the just-shy-of-al-dente pasta to the tomato sauce with tongs and tossed to marry the two. Finally, I gently broke the mackerel filets into the pasta and tossed to warm them through. Since we had pine nuts around, I toasted them to sprinkle atop the pasta. Pine nuts, it turns out, are a natural bedmate with mackerel.
4. Choir
I sang in an Episcopalian choir in high school, and it was a formative experience that instilled in me a love of choral music, and of singing with other people. It took me a long time to start singing again and fitting it into my life in New York, and I’ve finally done it! This past fall, I started singing in a choir called The SoHarmoniums. It’s an intergenerational women’s choir that sings all kinds of music (not just churchy choral tunes), and the vibe is friendly and inclusive, while maintaining a certain level of seriousness around the singing. We rehearse weekly on the Upper West Side, which sometimes feels like a schlep since I live in Brooklyn, but it’s always worth it once we start singing. We recently had our holiday concert — my first concert with the group — in a distinguished church on Central Park West. There was candlelight and a violinist, and we wore silky blouses and sparkly earrings and sang lots of songs, all somehow related to the concert’s theme: light. I think we sounded really nice, and I already decided to join for another semester. Yay!
That’s all from me for today! Thank you so much for reading The Dish in 2024, and for your patience as I’ve experimented with different formats and styles. I’m proud of where we’ve arrived, and eager to keep writing.
I’ll be back with a January menu soon!
x Phoebe
I enjoyed all the parts of this Dish very much, P., but l like knowing you’ve found a group to sing with the most.
Love IXV!!